So it’s been decided. Joey Essex is the star of this year’s I’m A Celebrity…

When he leaves the jungle the prize is his own reality TV show in which he will star alongside his family. Then he’s off to Africa to film a documentary about monkeys.

And why is the ex-Towie star getting all this? Because he’s thick. So thick that at the age of 23 he can’t tell the time, he doesn’t know how to blow his nose and he doesn’t understand words of more than five letters.

“What’s submerged mean?” he asked when told that’s what was going to happen to him in one of his Bushtucker Trials.

And presumably that documentary he’s going to Africa to make will demonstrate – with much comedy – how even a monkey is smarter than dim-witted Joey.

You can just see him and a monkey sitting side by side eating bananas and the monkey will be looking at Joey – the ­inference being: “He can’t have come from my gene pool surely?”

Oh yes. Ha, ha. Hilarious!

But is it really hilarious that a young man who has had little or no education has got to the age of 23 unable to blow his nose because he decided it was something he didn’t need to learn?

And you can guarantee if he can’t tell the time, he won’t be able to read or write either, which isn’t because he’s dyslexic. It’s because no one bothered to teach him.

If Joey wasn’t on telly he’d be a dole statistic because he’s qualified for nothing. And thanks to TV bosses, we’re laughing at that?

And by giving him his own show, by making a comedic feature of his lack of education, those TV bosses are saying to kids like Joey: “Forget school. You can be a star and have a 20-grand watch even though you can’t tell the big hand from the little hand.”

When Matthew Wright said last week Joey is smarter than he’s letting on, he was wrong. He’s not. What he’s got is an animal cunning and a sweet face that’ll see him through the next few years.

But what happens then – when TV has tired of the “Thickie Joey” routine and moved on to the next freak show? Joey becomes unemployable, that’s what.

He’ll have blown whatever money he had and be living on benefits, never having held down a proper job and telling everyone: “I used to be Joey Essex.”

Who’ll be laughing then? Not Joey, that’s for sure.

This year’s I’m A Celebrity… has had its highest-ever ratings despite a pretty average line-up. Because it’s not the people who are important any more. It’s what’s done to them.

The smart ones know they’re being manipulated and play along. But people like Joey, whose mum killed herself when he was just 10, don’t.

He won’t see that he’s been treated like a circus act, being prodded into doing ever-more stupid things. Or that he’s become famous NOT because he has a talent or is accomplished or smart – but because he’s an idiot. A likeable idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

And all his reality TV show will do is shine a light on how he ended up that way. It will exploit his family and THEIR shortcomings in what will be Britain’s answer to Honey Boo Boo. And anyone who’s seen that show will know no one comes out of it looking less than cretinous.

Is that what British TV is about now – exploiting people who’ve slipped through the education system and who at 23 haven’t mastered the kind of stuff most five-year-olds have?

Whatever Joey Essex is isn’t anything to be celebrated. This is a lad who thinks the Prime Minister is called David Brown and that World War II ended in 1980.

And that’s not funny.

Compared on looks: Becky and Amy (Image: Rex)

Becky's the real winner

Rebecca Adlington is an Olympian. She has a gold medal, for goodness sake.

Yet Becky wept in the jungle this week, not just because of online trolls saying she’s ugly, but because comparisons are being made between her and beauty queen Amy Willerton.

And she knows in the celebrity world in which she now moves it’s Amy – who’s done nothing but be born beautiful – who has the advantage.

It made me weep too that our looks-obsessed society has made a girl who has achieved so much feel she is worth so little.

Is Labour out of its Ed?

It beggars belief that even after the 2007 banking crisis the Rev Paul Flowers – who knew nothing about banking and is alleged to be a coke-snorting, porn-obsessed pervert who indulged in orgies with rent boys – ever got to be in charge of the Co-op bank.

But he did and Labour’s two Eds – Balls and Miliband – are making themselves look mighty stupid trying to deny they had a close association with him.

This is despite the fact Balls accepted a 50-grand donation and the party itself got loans at the kind of rock-bottom interest rates no customer ever did.

But it’s Labour’s attempts to palm off their relationship with Flowers as merely a smear campaign by the Tories that’s making them look really shifty.

Miliband needs to own up to ALL of Labour’s dealings with the crystal meth Methodist because when the whole truth comes out – and it will – Miliband will have for ever lost his claim to any kind of integrity.

The very thing, he says, that makes his party different to the Tories.

Job's gone to his head

For most primary school children Christmas is THE most exciting time of the year.

Not for pupils at Rogerstone Primary School in South Wales, whose headmaster Steve Rayer has cancelled all yuletide celebrations because he’s got the inspectors in.

And even though Estyn, the Welsh equivalent of Ofsted, has said Christmas activities shouldn’t be cancelled, Mr Rayer is adamant.

Maybe those inspectors should look closely – not at the school but at a headmaster who is incapable of handling a kiddies’ panto and a few parties while his school is being assessed.

Maybe they’ll come to the conclusion that Mr Rayer isn’t just incapable of multi-tasking but is a headteacher who’s thinking more about his job and his reputation than what’s best for his pupils.

Green puts us all in red

David Cameron has a knack of not knowing how to get the electorate on side.

However, he may have inadvertently done it this week by telling his ministers to “get rid of all the Green crap”. He was talking about Green Taxes which have added £112 a year to our energy bills and will add another £200 by 2020.

The Green agenda is very noble… blah, blah. But energy bills are now crippling ordinary people, many of whom have to make a choice between heating and eating. Which is why going Green is a luxury we currently can’t afford.

As for accusations Cameron is doing another U-turn (the Tories’ slogan was Vote Blue Go Green) this is one the public will welcome with open arms!

Not the ticket for each other

So, Adrian and Gillian Bayford, who scooped £148million on the lotto have split. Of course they have.

Before the win they were working so hard they barely saw each other.

Gillian was working nights in a hospital, Adrian was working days in a record shop.

They probably never had time to really look at their relationship – how it was, where it was going. All that mattered was their kids, aged six and eight, and keeping a roof over their heads.

Then £148m quid dropped into their laps and suddenly they could have everything they’d ever wanted. Only they didn’t want the same things. Gillian loved the high life, bought a £6million mansion, designer clothes and a fleet of luxury cars.

But Adrian hated the high life, couldn’t drive any of the luxury cars (he’d never learned) and didn’t like life in the mansion.

The couple have blamed the stress of becoming overnight millionaires for their split. But it isn’t that. Money just gave them the luxury of spending time with each other only to realise they weren’t remotely suited.

Like so many couples all that had kept them together was their kids and the lack of money to live any other way than together.